Subtitle: "When he took office, Pope Francis promised a renewed Catholicism open to the world. Five and a half years and many sex abuses later, the universal Church is split as never before".
Der Spiegel reports on Pope Francis’s
failures, especially in the abuse crisis
by Maike Hickson
September 21, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Germany's leading weekly newsmagazine
Der Spiegel will publish tomorrow an issue titled
“Thou Shalt Not Lie. The Pope and the Church in her greatest crisis,” which contains an 8-page-long story on many of the failures of Francis's pontificate. LifeSiteNews has been able to view an online version of the magazine prior to its print release tomorrow.
A prominent part of that study is an interview with an abuse victim from Buenos Aires who reveals that she and a group of abuse victims wrote in 2013 a joint letter to Pope Francis. They never received an answer, but one of the abusing priests has been evasively transferred to another position.
Der Spiegel, in its 39/2018 issue, is astonishingly critical of Pope Francis in his overall leadership, to include his wavering attitudes concerning many matters – including Communion for Protestants and Communion for the “remarried” divorcees – all of which seem to foster his own fear that he will eventually go “down the history as the one who split the Church” (these words were repeated by
Spiegel).
They also cover scandals such as the Father Inzoli case (in which Cardinal Müller intervened), the drug-fueled homosexual party in Rome, the McCarrick scandal and his financial gifts to Rome, and the members of the C9 Council who have been accused of cover-ups (Errazuriz, Maradiaga).
Prominent among the failures of this Pope as described by the magazine – whose journalists traveled to Argentina, Munich, and other places for this article – is his lack of merciful and just responsiveness toward sex abuse victims.
Spiegel spoke with a woman, Julieta Añazco, who had been sexually abused by a priest, Ricardo Giménez, when she was only seven years old. The abuse took place when she went into his tent, during a youth camp, for the Sacrament of Penance.
Añazco comes from La Plata, a city not far away from Buenos Aires. She only later found out, explains
Spiegel, that Father Giménez had by then already been transferred to another position due to allegations of his abuse of minors.
This woman – who also gave an interview to the now-much discussed French documentary T
he Code of Silence: Sex Abuse in the Church and
who might become “the woman who brought down the Francis papacy” – said that she suffered much and tried to receive therapy. She now is a member of the organization “Network of the survivors of ecclesiastical abuse” where, according to the German magazine, “she can speak about what happened to her.”
As
Spiegel reports, “in 2013, shortly after Bergoglio had been elected Pope, Julieta Añazco and 13 other victims of the priest Giménez wrote a letter in which they described what had happened to them – and why they now still suffered under depression; and had suicide attempts; or why they became drug addicts, while the accused priest continued to celebrate Mass and was in contact with children.”
In December 2013, these victims sent the letter, by registered mail, to Pope Francis. “Three weeks later,” says
Spiegel,
“there came an acknowledgment of receipt. Then they heard nothing anymore.” The accused priest – Father Giménez – subsequently was transferred to work in a nursing home for the elderly, where he still “shows himself to journalists in his cassock.” “He is respected there and continues to celebrate Mass,” adds the magazine.
As
Spiegel further reports,
“during Bergoglio's time as cardinal, many of the abuse victims in Buenos Aires [the former episcopal seat of Jorge Bergoglio] had turned to him for help; nobody was permitted access to him.”
Julieta Añazco and other victims now demand a civil legal process against their abusers.
There are currently 62 trials going on against Argentine priests. Spiegel says “the number of their victims could be in the thousands.” Añazco underscores:
“It is difficult for us, because nobody believes us. We wish to reach the Pope, but he is not interested in us.”
Juan Pablo Gallego – a prominent legal defender of the abuse victims in Argentina – goes even so far as to claim that
“Francis is now in exile in Rome – has found his refuge [with immunity] there, so to speak. In Argentina, he would first have to refute the suspicion that for years he protected rapists and abusers of children.”]
Speaking with
Spiegel, Gallego then discusses the now-famous case of the child abuser Father Julio César Grassi, who has been imprisoned for having violated boys in the age range of 11 to 17 years.
According to Gallego, Pope Francis had been Grassi's confessor and ordered a 2,600-page long legal study in order to defend Grassi against the abuse charges and “in order to criminalize the victims,” in the words of the Spiegel.
“In 2006, I had a conversation with Bergoglio,” explains Gallego. “He was withdrawn and mistrusting, he said no word about [the fact] that the Church paid Grassi's lawyers. The current image of an open, sympathetic Pope Francis does not fit the man whom I sat in front of at the time.”
Further gleanings from the Spiegel dossier by Ms Hickson:
Unnamed cardinals are quoted about the pope's lying:
Example: 'He is ice-cold, sly, Macchiavellian -
an what is worse, he lies!'
by Maike Hickson
September 22, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Today, the German magazine
Der Spiegel, one of the most influential political magazines in Europe, published a report on the failures of the papacy of Francis.
LifeSiteNews previously summed up the parts of this report about the involvement of Pope Francis in a cover-up of abuse cases in Argentina. But the Spiegel authors also make a report from their conversations with unnamed prelates in the Vatican who spoke quite critically about Pope Francis.
According to the magazine,
one cardinal not only called the Pope effectively a liar, but he also said: “From the beginning, I did not believe one word of his.” The Spiegel's own comments on this papacy, as we shall see, are no less strong.
One of the high-ranking interlocutors told the journalistic team that,
in the Vatican there reigns “a climate of fear and of uncertainty.” [Not the first time this has been alleged and reported even in the MSM.]
“Francis is very good at getting things in motion,” a German prelate is quoted as saying, “but when, in the end, there is only wavering, that for sure does not help.”
Examples of such waverings are to be found, as the Spiegel says, in Pope Francis' handling of the debate about Communion for Protestant spouses of Catholics.
One German cardinal tells the magazine about
lies, intrigues, “and a Holy Father who, unlike anyone before him, puts into doubt the truth of the Faith.”
Marie Collins, herself a prominent abuse victim and advocate for victims, speaks about the Pope's and the Vatican's handling of abuse cases thus:
“beautiful words in the public and [then] opposite actions behind closed doors.”
Spiegel comments that
the Pope might very well ignore the “indications of crimes within his own inner circle” because “he is interested, for reasons of power politics, in keeping one or another cardinal or bishop in his office.” So, in the German magazine's eyes, “Francis [thereby] makes himself vulnerable.”
He fights for years “against global capitalism, but took – like his predecessors – sums of millions from the now-rejected Cardinal McCarrick which he himself had received from donors.”
Or,
“the Pope praises the value of the traditional family, but then surrounds himself with counselors and collaborators who live the opposite – in a more or less obvious concubinage with representatives of either sex.”
“Is the Pope still master of the situation?” asks Spiegel. It points out that “criticism [of this papacy] meanwhile comes from a circle much larger than that of globally connected arch-conservatives.”
One of the problems of this Pope, according to the magazine, is that “he is silent in delicate matters” such as the dubia of the four cardinals concerning his post-apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, but also concerning the petition of 30,000 women who have recently requested that he answer the questions arising from the Viganò report. He does not answer these women, he is mute, and “he, rather, leaves the accusation unchallenged that he has known, since June 2013, about the doings of the child-abuser McCarrick.”
When speaking about one of the Pope's close collaborators, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, and his own Archdiocese of Munich, the Spiegel points to the crisis of faith in Bavaria.
“A part of the problem in the Archdiocese, however, is homemade,” it explains. The credibility of the Church there, it adds, is being undermined by the facts that “a high-ranking clergyman of Munich shamelessly places his concubine right in the first pew, and that also in this city, there is indignation about openly homosexual pastors and about an unpredictable Pope.”
“From the beginning, I did not believe one word of his.” These are
the trenchant words of a cardinal within the walls of the Vatican: “He preaches mercy, but is in truth an icecold, sly Machiavellian, and, what is worse – he lies.”
New Catholic at Rorate caeli had this comment:
When you're a liberal pope and
you've lost Europe's most liberal weekly...
RORATE CAELI
SEpt. 22, 2018
Der Spiegel is the most important center-left weekly in Europe. Created in post-war Germany, it provides every week the "acceptable view" for liberal minds in the Federal Republic and, therefore, in all of Europe. It is the essential "Gutmensch" media source.
So when you are a Pope in Rome, elected in great measure with the influence and the wide State-provided funds of the wealthiest national church in the world, and you check all the boxes of what the liberal world order asks you to do -- from radical environmentalism and the abolition of national borders to the normalization of homosexuality -- what else must you do to keep their favor?
Apparently, you have to avoid protecting clerical sexual abusers. Yes, even Der Spiegel has a red line: even for the readers of Der Spiegel the promotion of McCarrick and a long history of the protection of questionable people in Buenos Aires is too much...
In the annus horribilis of 2010, when the media revived the clerical sex abuse scandal in the wake of official reports documenting clerical sex abuses in Ireland and Germany going back to the 1920s (in the case of Ireland and the 1950s in the case of Germany), Der Spiegel joined the AP and the New York Times in an openly acknowledged 'consortium' of pooled resources and efforts to find anything that could directly or indirectly link Joseph Ratzinger to any sexual abuse or cover-up in which he himself was involved.
To no avail, as we all know, despite patently desperate attempts to blame him for the later recidivism of a priest abuser sent to Munich from another diocese shortly before he left Munich to become Prefect of the CDF, and for a couple of cases in the USA in which the CDF under Cardinal Ratzinger had made decisions that were hardly cover-ups. None of those took at all, and to their credit, the media power triumvirate eventually gave up.
In the past few days, AP and the New York Times (using the AP story) finally picked up on the reports about Cardinal Bergoglio's record of dealing with clerical and episcopal sex abuses in Argentina.
But the Spiegel report is far more comprehensive, and worse, it effectively calls the reigning pope a liar. Which we all know he is. From story after story that has been well documented even in the mainstream secular and mass media who continue to be Bergoglio's cheerleaders and main propagandists and who, of course, never called the lies for what they are.
- How will the new consolidated Vatican communications juggernaut respond to this? Or will they even bother?
- And will AP, the Times and Spiegel continue to investigate Bergoglio's record in Argentina in dealing with sex abuse cases (of which he has famously boasted he never had any in his diocese)?
Now that the triumvirate is at least admitting by their reportage of the BA record that their emperor has always been naked, despite all the great new clothes they have been claiming to see in him, will they investigate his entire background farther - there are enough substantial leads out there, some of them in books out of Argentina, to follow, just that the international media has always ignored them.
Reporting Hickson's LifeSite story on his blog today, Marco Tosatti adds an interesting PS which he gets from Giuseppe Rusconi, the Vaticanista who runs the site Rosso Porpora:
From Luigi Accattoli, a leak [the Italian word is 'indiscrezione', implying some information indiscreetly revealed] of relevant importance: According to his source, the projected 'response' of the Vatican to Carlo Maria Vigano's 'Testimony' was presented to the pope on Monday, Sept. 17, by Cardinal Parolin and was approved the next day. Therefore, it ought to be a question of houtrs or a few days before it is made public.
Accattoli, former lead Vaticanista for Corriere della Sera who retired some time during Benedict XVI's pontificate, is one of our colleagues who has been most enthusiastically among the Bergogliophiles. Known to be well-linked to the Secretariat of State and the more progressive left wing of the Church (his great friend and colleague, the late Giancarlo Zizola, attributed his employment by Corriere to arch-progressivist Cardinal Silvestri, who was serving as the Vatican 'foreign minister' at the time, and who was one of Bergoglio's 'kingmakers', being in the Sankt-Gallen Mafia), Accattoli's information is not to be dismissed.
It will be interesting to see whether the Vatican response to Vigano will correct, deny or explain the latter's claim that he informed the pope of McCarrick's dubious record when they met on June 23, 2013.
Seeing as it is now the 22nd and the response has not yet been made public, there have obviously been second thoughts about it. Of perhaps the Vatican just did not want it to crowd out the news of the China agreement...
Of course, Bergoglio has lost no opportunity of hitting out indirectly at Vigano and his accusations - the same way he relentlessly hammered on the critics of Amoris laetitia, including the authors of the DUBIA.
What is most objectionable about Bergoglio's cowardice in this respect is that he chooses to use his homilettes at Casa Santa Marta as the vehicle for his attacks. The General Instruction for the Roman Missal (GIRM) says:
The Homily is part of the Liturgy and is strongly recommended, for it is necessary for the nurturing of the Christian life. It should be an exposition of some aspect of the readings from Sacred Scripture or of another text from the Ordinary or from the Proper of the Mass of the day and should take into account both the mystery being celebrated and the particular needs of the listeners.
Is it not sacrilegious and blasphemous to use the liturgy to advance one's personal agenda citing Scripture to vaunt one's sanctimony?
Someone has compiled Bergoglio's 'homiletic' attacks so far post-Vigano:
Revealing “The Great Accuser”:
How the pope fires back at critics
despite 'pledge of silence'
by Bree Dail
September 22, 2018
Although the pope pledged that he would “not say a single word” about the accusation that he was involved in the coverup of Cardinal McCarrick’s sexual abuse, he seems unable to stop making oblique references to exactly that situation.
There has been a pattern — a theme if you will — that has overtaken the papal homilies of the past few weeks since the allegations first sufraced. Indeed, since news broke of the 11-page testimony from Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganó on August 25th, the Roman Pontiff — ho has committed to an official silence in the face of the accusations from Viganó — has been quite vocal, only veiling his words in the thinnest of biblical allusions.
Since the Viganó Revelations, the pope has either directly (or indirectly) referred to this crisis, his critics, or his own actions during
no fewer than nine homilies.
The themes range from making stark accusations of his critics’ motives and alleged “hypocrisy” — at times comparing them to Satan, the “Great Accuser” — to an apparent equating of his own situation and that of his fellow bishops to that of the innocent Christ during His passion.
The following are direct references:
9/3/2018:
“With people lacking good will, with people who only seek scandal, who seek only division, who seek only destruction, even within the family: silence, prayer.”
9/6/2018:
“There are people who go through life talking about others, accusing others and never thinking of their own sins. … A sign that a person does not know, that a Christian does not know how to accuse himself is when he is accustomed to accusing others, to talking about others, to being nosy about the lives of others. And that is an ugly sign.”
9/10/2018:
“We are on a path, and we are watched by the great accuser who raises up the accusers of today to catch us in contradiction…”
9/11/2018:
“In these times, it seems like the ‘Great Accuser’ has been unchained and is attacking bishops. True, we are all sinners, we bishops. He tries to uncover the sins, so they are visible in order to scandalize the people. The ‘Great Accuser’, as he himself says to God in the first chapter of the Book of Job, ‘roams the earth looking for someone to accuse’.”
9/13/2018:
“Only the merciful are like God the Father. ‘Be merciful, as your Father is merciful.’ This is the path, the path that goes against the spirit of the world, that thinks differently, that does not accuse others. Because among us is the ‘Great Accuser,’ the one who is always going about to accuse us before God, to destroy. Satan: he is the ‘Great Accuser.’ And when I enter into this logic of accusing, of cursing, seeking to do evil to others, I enter into the logic of the ‘Great Accuser’ who is the ‘Destroyer,’ who does not know the word mercy, does not know, has never lived it.”
9/14/2018:
“Our victory is the cross of Jesus, victory over our enemy, the ancient serpent, the Great Accuser” … And the ancient serpent that was destroyed still barks, still threatens but, as the Fathers of the Church say, he is a chained dog: do not approach him and he will not bite you; but if you try to caress him because you attracted to him as if he were a puppy, prepare yourself, he will destroy you.”
9/18/2018:
Per Vatican News: The Pope brought up that it was also the people who yelled “crucify him”. Jesus then compassionately remained silent because “the people were deceived by the powerful”, Pope Francis explained. His response was silence and prayer. Here the shepherd chooses silence when the “Great Accuser” accuses him “through so many people”. Jesus “suffers, offers his life, and prays”, Pope Francis said.
9/20/2018:
With regard to the “doctors of the law,” Pope Francis says that “they have an attitude that only the hypocrites use often: they are scandalized.” And they say: “But look, what a scandal! You can’t live like that! We have lost our values. Now everyone has the right to enter into the church, even the divorced, everyone. But where are we?” The scandal of the hypocrites. This is the dialogue between the great love that forgives all, [the love of] Jesus; [and] the love “by halves” of Paul and of this woman, and also our [love], which is an incomplete love because none of us is a canonized saint. Let’s be honest. It is hypocrisy: the hypocrisy of the “just,” of the “pure,” of those who believe they are saved by their own proper external merits...
And the Church, when it journeys through history, is persecuted by hypocrites: hypocrites within and without. The devil has nothing to do with repentant sinners, because they look upon God and say, “Lord, I am a sinner, help me!” And the devil is impotent; but he is strong with hypocrites. He is strong, and he uses them to destroy, to destroy the people, to destroy society, to destroy the Church. The workhorse of the devil is hypocrisy, because he is a liar. He makes himself out to be a powerful prince, beautiful, and from behind he is an assassin.
9/21/2018:
Per Vatican News: When an apostle forgets his origins and starts off on a career path, the Pope explained, he distances himself from the Lord and become an ‘official’. An official who perhaps does a good job, but he is not an apostle. He is incapable of ‘transmitting’ Jesus; he is someone who organizes pastoral projects and plans and many other things; he is what he called an “affarista” – a “wheeler-dealer” – of the Kingdom of God because he has forgotten from where he was chosen.
Instead of looking at ourselves, Pope Francis said, we tend to look at others, at their sins, and to talk about them. This, he said, is a harmful habit. It’s better to accuse oneself, the Pope suggested, and keep in mind from where the Lord chose us from.
The message delivered on September 21st was particularly nteresting, as just two days ago, Archbishop Victor Manuel “Tucho” Fernández — the papal confidant and ghostwriter (who is known for writing the book,
Heal Me With Your Mouth: The Art of Kissing) — claimed that Archbishop Viganó was suffering from a “megalomania” psychosis. In fact, those considered to be in the pope’s “circle of nine” — as well as others engaged in trying to change the narrative in these scandals — have gone directly after the person of the Archbishop, and those delivering his message.
Recall that it was only a few days after
National Catholic Register’s Edward Pentin broke the Viganó story that Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga unjustly and viciously attacked Pentin for his investigative work.
Maradiaga, who has been embroiled in his own financial and sexual abuse scandals for months, has been one of the closest advisors to this pope. He also has been directly tied to George Soros through his PICO organization. Soros, for his part, has vast connections to funding extreme leftist organizations - including violent ones, such as ANTIFA. With all this rhetoric, and the resulting vitriol, is it any wonder that Archbishop Viganó took to hiding, reportedly in fear for his life?
The following was obvously written before the disclosure of the DER SPIEGEL dossier on the failures of the Bergoglio Pontificate thus far.
Gear up for the long fight:
It's time to press the attack
by Steve Skojec
September 21, 2018
In January, when I shared my intuition that 2018 was going to be “a year of defying expectations,” “of things not going at all the way we think they will,” and, in fact, “the beginning of the end for Francis and Friends” – I didn’t know what that would look like. It was just a gut feeling, a sense of a shifting of the winds, a turning of the tide, if you will. At the time, I wrote that I didn’t know how it would happen or what we’d get later.
Now, nine months later, things are coming into focus. A nonstop barrage of bad news for this papacy and the explosive re-emergence of the clerical abuse scandal – with implications going all the way to the apostolic see – have shifted public opinion dramatically.
Catholic commentators who would have rolled their eyes at the kind of coverage we were providing here just last year are suddenly out in front, leading charges against the corruption in Rome. It never ceases to amaze me just how quickly everything changed, as though a single spark were enough to light a spiritual conflagration of awakening.
And perhaps it was Our Lady who lit the match.
Now we’re drowning in the fallout. There are far too many stories to cover exposing the true nature of the anti-Church that now co-exists with authentic Catholicism. We can see symptoms of it everywhere. Of recent note:
- the story of how Cardinal Schönborn, editor of the Catechism and handpicked interpreter of Amoris Laetitia by Pope Francis, spontaneously blessed the union of arguably the most notorious gay couple in Austria;
- the report accusing Monsignor Walter Rossi, longtime rector of the Basilica of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, of being part of the gay mafia in D.C. just as his predecessor, Bishop Michael Bransfield, has been accused of the same; and
- the story of how Cardinal Cupich has mistreated a priest who, himself a victim of clerical sexual abuse, burned a rainbow flag that once adorned the sanctuary of his parish.
In all of these things, we see signs that the escalation of the conflict between good and evil within the Church – and a possible schism along with it – is coming faster and more furiously than ever before. These stories are all taken from just the past few days, and more are coming all the time.
At the same time, I would caution that as bad as the homosexual and abuse crisis is – and it’s terrifying –
we should be equally or more concerned about the attacks on doctrine, on the Gospels, on the structures and offices and credibility of the Church. [The sex abse scandal being only one manifestation of the cumulative effect of all the above.]
The homosexual cabal is an instrument in the larger attempt to destroy the institution of the Church, her sacraments, her sacred priesthood, the papacy, and her efficacy in sharing divine teaching and saving souls. We’ve got to be careful about letting this be the only area of focus.
Because while everyone is distracted by the sexual abuse train wreck, they’re still ramming things through – like the recent apostolic constitution on synods that will be used to force things into the category of magisterial teaching that do not belong there.
We have to keep our eyes on both.
What seems clear, too, is that the pope, once seemingly untouchable, is on his heels. Day after day, homily after homily, he has likened his plight and that of the bishops under fire to that of Christ during His passion, and he has painted his critics and opponents as agents of Satan. One person in Rome told me that Francis, in this contact’s opinion, is “terrified.”
I’m not so sure.
There is a danger in assuming that the advantage will remain ours. There is a danger in failing to continue to press the attack. For all of his rhetorical homiletic firebombs, the pope has continued to stand by his silence in the face of his accusers. Archbishop Viganò remains in hiding for fear of his life. And the upcoming synods this year and next will move forward under the auspices of the new, more authoritative construct already being applied to their final outcome per this week’s apostolic constitution.
What this means is that the Church’s approach to homosexual behavior, clerical celibacy, and women’s ordination (at least to the diaconate) are all very much up for grabs in the minds of Church leaders.
Remember that the German bishops, having encountered data indicating thousands of cases of abuse by their clergy, have decided that these are the issues that need to be reconsidered in the light of their findings.
- the well of anger from the lay faithful, though deep, is not inexhaustible. Even if it were possible, it is unhealthy to sustain a state of rage, day in and day out, for as long as this will take.
- The willingness of the secular media to go after a pope who has championed so many of their pet issues remains unclear, with division in the ranks.
- The occupied Vatican has taken fire, but when the dust settles, how much damage will have been sustained?
- The investigations into abuse claims now being undertaken by civil governments will go on for years. Will a steady drip of horrifying revelations be enough to drive the infiltrators out, or will a disgusted public only turn to apathy and sustained antipathy?
Just yesterday, a friend told me of being out in public with a priest in a Roman collar, only to have a man who saw him grumble about there being a “child-molester” in the building.
- Will such sentiments increase to the point of actual persecution? - Will the faithful – priests and laity alike – suffer the consequences of this anger while the leaders who are actually responsible for it continue to live in luxury, protected from reproach, like the tinpot dictators they are?
After doing this for four years, I will say it’d be nice to be able to have victory in sight. But we’re not there yet. We’ve got to gear up for a sustained fight. We’ve got to pace ourselves – which, if I’m being honest on a Friday afternoon after a month of nonstop knock-down, drag-out airing of dirty laundry and internecine struggles within our faith, sounds absolutely exhausting. But as I told you in my story about the Seven Devils, sometimes the only way out of the mountains is over the top, even if you’ve got nothing left in the tank and have to stumble forward in the dark by only the light of faith.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 23/09/2018 20:07]